The state of Nebraska has been breaking federal law to obtain and store an experimental drug cocktail used in lethal injections, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges in a complaint filed Monday.

The ACLU of Nebraska, along with the DEA, has filed a complaint which claims that Nebraska unlawfully obtained fentanyl, a Schedule II controlled substance, in order to execute prisoners Jose Sandoval and Carey Moore, arguing that the DEA ought to seize the drugs before they are used.

"As the complaint shows, a person or entity, including government agencies, needs a DEA registration to import a controlled substance," wrote Danielle Conrad, ACLU of Nebraska executive director, on Monday. "Federal law also requires those that handle a controlled substance to have a DEA registration particular to their authorized usage. These laws apply to the Nebraska Department of Corrections and to the Nebraska State Penitentiary (NSP), where the state carries out executions. But both institutions are ignoring the law in order to get the execution drugs they need to carry out the death penalty."

The ACLU notes that the NSP applied to register as a DEA importer in multiple years with a false pharmacy license number, one registered to a pharmacy that the Department of Corrections operates four miles away despite the license being specific to the pharmacy’s address and the people listed in the application.

"Put simply, the state broke the federal law by applying for an import registration for the prison based on the false claim that the prison possessed a state pharmacy license it did not," Conrad continued. "That licensed was assigned to the state pharmacy, and Nebraska law forbids it from being assigned, borrowed, or used by some other person or entity. In fact, in 2011, the pharmacy itself used this very same license number to apply legally for its own DEA import registration. When the NSP did the same, it was illegal."